Thank you. Good morning to everyone, to the first quarter 2021 results presentation. Today will be presenters José Leo, CFO of Aena, and myself. I will just leave the floor to José now. Thank you.
Thank you, Emilio. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this results presentation. Let's move on to the slide. Let's start by looking at the key highlights. Clearly, Q1 2021 is showing a continuation of the trend seen over the last part of 2020, entirely driven by the COVID-19 impact on traffic. We see the traffic, the number of passengers going down at consolidated level by 76.4%, with a different combination of performances in the Spanish network and at the Luton Airport. The decline is very substantial, 80% and 89% respectively. Whilst in the Brazilian airports, the performance has been by far much better, mainly driven by the domestic traffic in that country. All in all, pretty dull picture of the traffic, as we haven't seen any substantial or any meaningful recovery from the COVID-19 consequences.
In terms of revenues, the reduction in revenues quarter-on-quarter is only shy of 55%. Clearly, this is a much better performance than the one that you would expect by looking at the passenger traffic numbers. This is driven by the different accounting applying to aero revenues and non-aero or commercial revenues. For sure, we will discuss that in detail over the rest of the presentation and the Q&A. Let me tell you that whilst the aeronautical or aero revenues are moving in line with traffic, commercial revenues are not. The reason for that is that there are revenues accounted for on the basis of the minimum guaranteed rents, as it happened in 2020. We will elaborate further on that. The traffic is at the heart of the EBITDA performance. We are showing a negative EBITDA this quarter of EUR 121.5 million at consolidated level.
Clearly, the first quarter of the year is a quarter where usually, even in normal circumstances, the traffic levels are on average less than the traffic levels for the rest of the year, and this is always impacting the relative performance of quarter one even in a normal year. This is clearly something that in this particular year is not the dominating force. The dominating force is the traffic performance driven by COVID-19. Also Q1 is subdued usually because we have to account on day one, on the 1st of January every year, for the entire impact of the local taxes, particularly the business rate, so to speak, the IBI. That is the name of this particular tax in Spain. This is EUR 151 million impact day one.
Excluding that, clearly, we would enter into a positive EBITDA territory, but that doesn't mean that the performance is any good, clearly. That translates into a net loss for the quarter of EUR 241 million, once again, affected or impacted by the local taxes accounting net of taxes of the corporation tax in this particular case, but still is clearly a negative picture. Let me tell you that given the circumstances and given the impact of the commercial revenue accounting treatment, one very good proxy of what's going on in the business is the operating cash flow. The operating cash flow is negative this quarter by EUR 107 million, which means that we are still burning cash pre-CapEx, driven by the extremely low levels of traffic.
Overall, for the whole year, we remain confident that even taking into account all the existing perspectives on traffic evolution over the rest of the year, we expect our operating cash flow to be more or less neutral or breakeven over the year. That means that the cash that we will be burning will be entirely associated to the investment to the CapEx program. On page five, we are disclosing more details on exactly what I have been discussing before. I'm not going to go through the whole set of information, but I will focus on a couple of points. First of all, in terms of commercial and real estate revenue, as you can see, there is a decrease of Well, there is a typo here in the English version because clearly it's not increasing, but decreasing.
In application of the IFRS 16 leases, as we did last year, we are accounting in this particular quarter for close to EUR 120 million of minimum annual guaranteed rents, as we have the full right to receive this revenue. That doesn't mean that there are no issues around it. We highlight on the next page that there are a number of tenants that have rejected the bid. We will come back to that in a minute. On top of this, we are assessing any potential credit risks associated to these revenues. Frankly, in application of IFRS 9, the strict application of that, and going through the proper analysis, we have come to the conclusion that we needed to provide for a relatively small amount of cash or amount of costs to take care of any potential credit risks.
From that angle, there are no losses or significant losses to be accounted for as part of these discussions on the minimum guarantee rents. Moving on to slide six. Clearly, the key point here is the status of the negotiation of the commercial contracts. We put forward the offer that you all know very well. Part of the tenants, part of our commercial partners accepted the offer. In terms of numbers, the majority of them accepted the offer, but clearly that only represents 14% of the MAG or the revenues affected. The largest players rejected the offer. Most of them decided to go legal. They filed for injunction requests, injunction decisions, orders before the Spanish courts. The result of that is that a good number of cases, the judges decided to suspend or to temporarily suspend the execution of the guarantees associated to these contracts.
It's fair to say that we are on hold in terms of executing our guarantees on most of these situations. I want to highlight the fact that the judges at this stage are not getting into the, let's say, the relevant case, which is for me how good or bad, whether or not the offer made by Aena is good enough. They are not judging the merits of the offer we put on the table. The decisions are only about whether or not to grant the injunctions that the tenants are requesting. I'm sure we will come back to that later on. With regard to the DORA, there is no new information. The DORA II proposal is being assessed by the different bodies involved in the process, and we expect the decision to be made over the coming months.
Frankly, we have no visibility as to when this will be made public. I think that this is all I wanted to comment on. I suggest to skip, unless you have any particular interests on that, the slides number eight and number nine, and I will pass you over to Emilio, that will be taking you through the commercial business elements of this presentation, if that's okay. Thank you.
Thank you, José. Now we move into slide number 10, in which we are highlighting the key aspects for the analysis of the evolution of the commercial revenues this quarter. First of all, as you know, Aena applies IFRS 16 leases and recognizes all the income associated with the minimum annual guarantees, which during the first quarter amounted EUR 119.7 million, as there still exists a contractor right to receive these revenues. These MAG have been recorded based on the amount reflected in the contracts for each year. In 2021, EUR 704 million distributed monthly based on passenger traffic, on the traffic curve of the year.
Nevertheless, for those contracts in which the extension, renewal, amendment agreements have been signed, the criterion adopted for recording the MAG and any adjustments thereto resulting from the reduction agreements shall be linear throughout the life of the contract, and also within each year, for equal amounts in each month from the signing date of these agreements. When these extensions or the renewals are signed, from that date, the minimum annual guarantee is going to be linear during the remaining life of the contract, even during each one of the years. Okay? In terms of the first contract that has incurred in this situation is the duty-free activity contract due to the signing of the extension that entered into force in October 2020, so six months ago.
The impact of applying this linear criterion is that in the first quarter of 2021, EUR 54.4 million in minimum annual guarantees have been recorded, which would not have been recorded following the previous distribution criteria. Additionally, in the first quarter of 2020, Aena did not record any MAG from March 15 to March 31, in amount of EUR 26 million. As you remember, last year at the beginning of the pandemic, the accounted premium was being analyzed. This application of the IFRS 16 of applying 100% of the minimum annual guarantees was not yet applied on that quarter, was applied in June. In June, this impact would be diminished.
Finally, in the future and in application of this IFRS 16, there might be adjustments resulting from potential commercial agreements or the application of court decisions, which would entail the minimum annual guarantees and any adjustment being recorded using the straight-line method throughout the life of the contract. With this, what we want to highlight is that, in the case of any contract that we sign the renewal, we sign any amendment in the future, we will also have the accounting impact of this linearity of the rents, the remaining part of the contract, and also the negative impact of the discounts being applied also throughout the life of the contract. If we move into page 11, just to highlight how these changes that I have just mentioned have impacted the revenues.
You see the first line on duty-free shops, that the growth is now 82% versus Q1 2020. That's because of the impact of this linearity of duty-free contract. Okay? We have the food and beverage, specialty shops, and advertising that have been impacted also by the traffic curve within 2021. Car parks, the -75%, because with the contract now is a Minimum Annual Guaranteed Rent per passenger. Sorry, car rental is -66%, and we have the Minimum Annual Guaranteed Rent per parks. Finally, car parks -75% that reflect the traffic evolution as is a business that is managed by Aena. This was mainly the main ideas we wanted to explain and to show in our presentation. Now we move into the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound or hash key. Once again, it's star one to ask a question. Your first question comes from the line of Nicolo Pessina calling from Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the quarterly results. I notice an increase of the OpEx compared to the previous quarters. I wonder if it's something related to the planned reopening and recovery of traffic, or there is any other element that we should consider, and maybe if you can give us an idea of what you expect in terms of future evolution of the OpEx in the next quarter. I would have a couple of questions on the DORA II proposal you submitted last month. The first one is if you can give us an idea of the COVID compensation for 2020 and 2021 that you intend to request, and if eventually, if the calculation of a surplus or deficit that Aena generates, that the CNMC does every year could be a good proxy of such compensation.
Secondly, I'd like to understand if the recovery of the sanitary costs in 2022, 2023 will be included in the cap of a tariff for the following year, or it should be excluded. Of course, if it's included, it would help the tariff to remain at a higher level for the rest of the DORA II period. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Nicolo. Well, first of all, I didn't quite understand your second question. We can come back to that in a minute. Let me answer the other two, if that's okay. With regard to the OpEx, I wanted to signal or to highlight that if you look at the OpEx in quarter one 2021, it's not very different from the OpEx in quarter four 2020. Of course, to come to that conclusion, you have to take out of the quarter one 2021 costs the local taxes impact, which is, as I said before, EUR 151 million. That means that when you exclude that, the run rate, so to speak, of operating costs in quarter four 2020 and quarter one 2021 are pretty similar because both of them are levels of costs commensurate with really poor months, poor quarters in terms of traffic.
Of course, they are not at the level of the quarter two 2020 because at that time we made a huge effort to frankly push very hard on each and every single service contract we have in the business, and this is not tenable long term with the intensity that we applied at that time. Our intention is to run the business at this sort of run rate until we see some traffic recovery. We are, so to speak, focusing on this every month, and looking ahead for every month and seeing whether or not we should relax some of the chokes that we put on the operating costs. We need to see.
If we see a signal of traffic recovery, of course, we will see the operating costs growing, and as I said a number of times, unfortunately, operating costs are never responding to the traffic in the same proportion. Otherwise, we will try and keep the costs under control at the current level. This is the intention. With regard to the COVID-related costs, they are all excluded of the cap. The legislation that approved the mechanism to recover these costs for Aena explicitly indicated that they were excluded from the cap. As I said before, I'm afraid I didn't understand your second question.
Well, very simply, can you give us an idea of the COVID compensation you requested to the regulator?
Okay. The Article 27. Well, no, the only thing I can tell you is we applied for that. We are not putting forward any particular figure. We are more keen on opening the door for the regulator to run the analysis to hopefully come to the conclusion that we should be compensated and to discuss the mechanism. Sorry. To discuss the mechanism to effectively put in place that compensation. The only other thing I can tell you, I'm sure you know, is that we have offered to get that compensation any time after DORA II, we are not particularly concerned about spreading that over a long period of time. Thank you.
Sure. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Siobhan Lynch from Deutsche Bank.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Three from me, if possible. The first, just to follow on from the question on the OpEx being flat versus Q4. Q2 traffic this year looks like it could still be down -75%, -80% levels versus 2019. Is it plausible that you could keep OpEx flat again quarter-on-quarter? My second question is on the MAGs. We know that the kind of court proceedings for the multiple approaches are happening at the moment. Are all the doors closed to discussion now, i.e., is it up to the courts or are you still trying to negotiate with the retailers?
On that, given that maybe we could see some delay in the traffic rebounds and maybe we don't see traffic start to come back till Q3, does this change your thoughts on ending the discounts in September? My final question was just on short-haul flights. We saw the French government progress the attempts last week to kind of ban flights under 2.5 hours that can be taken by train domestically. Do you think this is something that's of increasing risk for Aena, particularly given that domestic Spain is your largest passenger market? Or is it not very practical to implement in Spain? Thank you very much.
Starting with the OpEx. You mentioned the - 65%, well, comparing the potential traffic for 2021 with the 2019 levels. I believe this is still in the realms of the feasibility. It's still feasible. It could happen. Clearly, it would be more and more challenging as we move forward if the recovery is delayed, and we don't see that recovery in the early months of the summer, but rather on the second half of the summer. Let's assume for a while that we get to that - 65% traffic. That will mean that the coming months, probably starting in June, will be showing a certain degree of recovery. We will see traffic growing over the rest of the summer, and hopefully the autumn time.
In that case, clearly our operating costs will go up necessarily, and we wouldn't be able, if you like, to keep them at the current level. If this traffic recovery is not, let's say, crystallizing, of course, our intention will be to keep the costs under control at this level for as long as we don't see the traffic recovering. Hopefully this is answering your question. Otherwise, please let me know. With regard to the MAG discussions, honestly speaking, at this stage, there are no negotiations ongoing. We put on the table, as I said a number of times, a proposal which is balanced and generous. On average, we would be reducing the MAG by 60% on average over the 1.5-y ear period of time considered in the proposal. There are no discussions.
We are expecting them to hopefully come to the conclusion that it's better for them to accept the offer. If they don't, well, time will tell. We believe that it's extremely unlikely that judges can force a business to give up on 100% or 80% of the revenues when contractually we have a right to claim the payment of those revenues, and we are offering a reduction of 60% of them. Time will tell. In the meantime, we are not counting on that cash, and we are running the business and our financing arrangements with, let's say, not taking into account that these monies will be available over the coming months. When you make these kind of decisions, it's always tough. You have to consider the trade-offs.
On balance, believe me, we believe this is the right decision, the right position to be taken in the interests of our shareholders. Sorry, let me see. If there is a delay in the traffic recovery, well, for the time being, we are abiding by the reference of the royal decree published by the Spanish government at the end of December. That royal decree, let's say, set the framework in terms of the conditions and the timing for this kind of rent reductions. We are abiding by that. We believe it's a good reference. Should the COVID-19 crisis goes beyond the summer and the Spanish government consider alternatives, and they may potentially consider to extend this kind of arrangements, of course, we could take a look at that again.
In the meantime, we will try to keep an eye on this royal decree and abide by it. With regard to the short-term flights prohibition in France, first of all, I think this is going to be the trend. Nobody in this business should be ignorant of the fact that this is a trend, a trend that will be developing in different countries at different times. Clearly the end game is going to be that. I believe that still the business, the airport industry, will be able to deal with that and over time to make up for that and still being a very vibrant business. In the case of Spain, my view is that it will take a little bit longer for obvious reasons. I think for the Spanish government, the importance of some connections and the importance of the tourism industry is different.
Still, I believe that this is the trend. Having said that, I have been checking some numbers for France, and I think it's the same for Spain, and I don't think the impact is going to be so big because one thing is to be a domestic flight, a different thing is to be able to replace that domestic flight with a rail trip of less than 2.5 h ours. This is not a walk in the park. There are very few destinations, both in France, in my view, and in Spain, that will meet that condition.
Frankly, I think over time, this will be impacting the business, and the business should be replacing that with using the slots for something different, long-haul or short-haul to European, and indeed to take advantage of these rail connections as an additional way of bringing people to the long-haul flights. Part approaching or closing in catchment areas that were not available before.
Okay, brilliant. Thank you. That's really helpful.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Cristian Nedelcu calling from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Three, if I may. The first one, looking at spend per passenger in Spain over the next few years, how do you see that versus pre-COVID levels? Is it higher, lower? Any tailwinds or headwinds to mention there? Secondly, coming back on a prior question on the IMAAJ cap. If I understood well, the regulation says that COVID cost recovery cannot impact the IMAAJ cap. Do you believe there's any other lever that you could use to offset the K-factor dilution in 2022 and 2023? Anything else that you could compensate that in the IMAAJ cap framework.
The third one, if I may, coming back to the timeline of the negotiations on the minimum annual guarantees and the court proceedings there, could you give us a bit of a steer how, which are the next milestones? I mean, how should we think about this? Is it going to take a few more quarters until the situation may be solved, or any moving parts that we could consider there? Thank you.
Okay. In terms of spend per passenger, clearly for as long the COVID-19 impact is in play, the spend per passenger will tend to go up. Frankly, this is the kind of thing we are considering in our DORA II submission, without getting into the detail. It would be impossible to deliver the level of service, the quality standards, and these kind of things that are required by the regulation with a reduced number of passengers. What we are doing is clearly capturing all that in the DORA II. What you know about our DORA II proposal is the kind of path to recovery that we are expecting. The passenger numbers that you can see there are our best view this time of something that is balanced and adequate for the kind of discussion that the DORA II represents.
In terms of the IMAAJ cap, I'm not sure that I remember what you said that whether or not there is a, can you say again? Sorry, Cristian.
Yeah. I think we have the K-factor dilution in there in 2022 and 2023.
Yeah.
I think there's also a cap, IMAAJ cannot be higher than the prior year IMAAJ.
I was just wondering if you hope to convince the regulator to offset that K dilution with any other factor, such that you can actually increase the IMAAJ throughout 2023, 2024, 2025.
Well, the only possibility, and this is theoretical possibility that, of course, we will discuss with the regulator, is the fact that if, as we have a cap, and clearly that cap is preventing us from recovering everything we are factoring over the five years in the equation. Remember that in 2026, we are proposing an increase in tariffs. This is because somehow there is a sort of a spillover from the previous years where we cannot exceed the cap. One interesting solution would be, but this is just theoretical, would be to take advantage of this headroom in 2022, for instance, to fill it with part of the spillover. Hopefully, you understand the rationale.
In terms of the timing of the negotiation of tariffs, to be more precise, the timing of the court cases and next steps, I think the judges will be dealing with these requests or these injunction applications. That will take some time. Frankly, I don't know how long, but probably weeks or months. The Stage 2 will be the discussion on the merits of the proposal. It will be a completely different stage. This is all predicated on the fact that some judges may believe that Aena shouldn't take any new step that they may consider to be irreversible. The merits of the proposal will be judged later on. Probably that will take us into, I don't know, 2022. I don't know for how long, but certainly into 2022. We may need to wait, I don't know, one year or year and a half.
My belief is that as the traffic recovers, the tenants will be in a different mood to discuss these kinds of things. Of course, we will be always open to restart the discussions.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Elodie Rall calling from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Just coming back on the process of DORA II, could you remind us of the major milestone that we are going to see? Basically, when is the CNMC going to come back, and the DGAC, what's the phasing of that? Have you had any indication already on how everybody has received your proposal and what they've said? That's my first question. Second question is on M&A. We understood from the media that you were interested in purchasing maybe more Brazilian assets. Can you give us a little bit of insight on that? Last question is on bookings. I'm not sure if that question was asked, apologies if it was, but you already have some indication for the summer already with bookings. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Elodie. This is Emilio. Regarding your first question on DORA II milestones, firstly, and we believe before summer, we are going to have the CNMC proposal, okay. That if we see back to what happened in DORA I, the report will come with a comparison with our proposal, okay. Before the 30th of September, we will have the final outcome from the regulator, from the DGAC, and that will come in place at the 1st of January of 2022, and the tariffs as in past years on March 2022. Regarding your second question on M&A and Brazil, you are correct. We present an offer for the south airports in Brazil in the last round that was launched by the Brazilian government. We didn't win, okay. There was another offer well above our first proposal.
Regarding the strategy, as you can imagine, since we are operating the northeastern airports there in Brazil has come to be a strategic country for Aena. Also, in terms of the international expansion is one of our strategic plan pillars. We have a team that is always analyzing opportunities. That does not mean that we are going to offer to all of them, and of course, that does not mean that we are going to win them. That was the case in Brazil. As I've mentioned, Brazil is strategic for us, and thus it makes sense to analyze, in fact, the different projects that were being launched by the government. We decided to offer for one of them, to bid for one of them, although, as has happened many times, we didn't win.
Finally, in terms of the bookings for the summer, that's correct. Most of the airlines are just launching the bookings with a very high percentage versus 2019 figures, between 90%-95%. I think that shows the positive view coming from the airlines, although our situation is, let's say, we have to wait and see what happens in the next weeks in terms of lifting the restrictions and how the traffic evolves. As you know, the airlines can take out those bookings with just three weeks in advance. For us, let's say that does not give us a clear view what is going to happen in the summer.
Okay, thanks. You said 90%-95% of 2019 level you've seen in terms of booking for this summer. Is that what you said?
In some airlines that was the case, yes.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Luis Prieto calling from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon to all. Luis Prieto here. Apologies if these questions have already been asked. I had a technical issue on my side, on my end. The number one question would be, after the cash burn in Q1, what sort of operating cash flow would be reasonable to expect for the full year? The second question is, I understand that in the AGM it was mentioned that one of the objectives of the new strategic plan that the company is working on at the moment is the revision of the company's commercial business model. Given the current MAG dispute, is there a scenario in which the company moves away from the MAG model? If so, what models could be contemplated in this revision? Thank you.
Well, in response to your first question, as I said before, the objective for the year would be to keep the operating cash flow at break-even point, so basically neutral, assuming that the traffic decline for the whole year is something around the -65% on 2019, which is where we seem to be heading for. We don't know yet, but I think more and more, even if you look at what the ACI published last week, this seems to be the trend. On that basis, our focus is on getting a neutral impact from the operating side of the business on cash. That will mean that we will be burning cash on the CapEx program and nothing else. With regard to your second question, frankly, it's too early. We are just starting to work on our new strategic plans.
This is something that our objective is to carry on working and to get something out probably before the end of the year, unless the COVID-19 crisis lingers for too long. Otherwise, this is the plan, and indeed, we will be looking at everything, turning every stone, looking at alternatives, but it's too early to say. It would be pure speculation.
From what you're saying, do you feel there's a need to revise the model, or do you prefer to leave it unchanged?
No. Let me tell you something. Before the COVID-19 crisis, we all said, everybody, every player in this industry said things are changing, and although the business model is still robust and very good, over the coming years everybody knows there will be a transformation in terms of the way people approach shopping at the airports and the airport experience overall. We had that discussion a number of times. Probably part of that is driven by the digital world and the ability to get access to things anytime, anyplace. We were already, we and I suppose everybody else in the airport industry, was thinking of it. The COVID-19 has accelerated that in my view, in everybody's view, and you need to think about it.
That doesn't mean that we are, let's say, dropping the current model or thinking the current model is not going to be effective for a good while still. You need to think long term if you don't want to be in trouble.
Excellent. That's very useful. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Lobbenberg calling from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi there, and thanks for the effort to be as transparent as possible on the MAG because it's so confusing. I'll try and stay away from them. Can you just confirm, are you in the clear on all the covenant situations? I think there were some for Spain and some for Luton. Can I ask on the DORA II, are you absolutely confident that the whole thing goes to schedule? I know I asked this at the full year, and I think the President did raise the possibility of an extension to the current DORA at this time and a sort of delay as a possibility. As we look in the U.K., the regulation of Heathrow, they're examining new concepts for regulation and different changes to sharing traffic risks between the airports and the airlines.
Are you guys open to any change, or no, you just want to push through with the standard DORA structure? Just quickly, what do you think is going to happen with the slot regulations for the winter season next?
Sorry, Andrew, I didn't get your last question. Slot regulation, you meant?
Yeah.
Okay. Got it.
Is that going to come back to normal?
Yeah. Got it. I got it now. Okay. Well, I recognize the minimum guarantee accounting is confusing. Bear with me, Andrew, we are trying to do as much as we can to be transparent and clear. I am pointing you out to the cash evolution to make clear to you that this is probably today a much better proxy In terms of the covenant, just as a reminder, for Aena, we obtain waivers on the financial covenants that are in place, in some cases until June 2022, in some other cases until December 2022. We are fine there, although, honestly speaking, the issues with these covenants are always driven by the EBITDA. The EBITDA are fully dependent on traffic. If traffic recovers later or recovers less intensively than we expect and we wish, we may need to extend that request for the waiver.
Once again, I feel extremely confident about that, so I'm not particularly concerned about it. With regard to Luton, we are now discussing with the lenders the extension of the waivers, because the waivers are expiring there, and we are planning to extend them, hopefully, for the rest of the year. We are very confident as well. It's a matter of time. This is the situation today. These days, it's unavoidable that you need to go through these kind of discussions because, as I said before, even if your debt levels are not high or indeed are not higher than before, the EBITDA are clearly falling down the cliff. In terms of DORA II timing, my view now, more than ever, is that this DORA is going to go ahead. I might be wrong, but we believe this is the most likely scenario.
Some point in time this year, and hopefully delivering on time, the regulator will make public its position. I'm confident that the DORA will go ahead. That means that it's too late for us to discuss any other aspects of the regulation. As you mentioned, the Heathrow case is clearly going to be revisited. These discussions have been in place there for a long while. This is something you cannot bring up overnight. The current regulation in Spain is very young. I think probably the best thing to do is to carry on with it and to focus on removing caps and things like that, which is the next stage for DORA III, where the caps will disappear, and to be more focused on this, getting rid of some of audits rather than trying to revamp the whole thing. This is a view.
With regard to the slots, frankly, I don't know. I would expect the European Union to be flexible if this is the last time. What I mean by that is if there is some recovery over the summer, I personally believe that it wouldn't be bad to be flexible just for a number of months, because around the corner, let's say next year, they can get back to normal, no, to the standard. Honestly, Andrew, I have no idea. I don't know. There are different airlines with different interests and different views.
Can I just pop back on the covenant quickly? You have been really transparent and honest that the thing we should look at is operating cash flow rather than EBITDA. Why wouldn't banks want to do the same thing for your covenant? That would look quite different and worse, no?
Yeah. The banks have to look to what the lawyers agreed some years ago, and they have no alternative, frankly. I don't think there is any problem with this. What I see is that, particularly for Aena, the group of banks involved in the covenant discussions are very positive. They are extremely helpful. They know what Aena is. They know what the circumstances are. I'm not particularly concerned about that. Clearly, the banks, when they have to check the ratio, they have to abide by the contract. They cannot get back to their committees and say, "Let me amend the contract today.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Arthur Truslove calling from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Arthur Truslove from Credit Suisse. First question from me was just around what rules you think are likely to apply for people traveling to Spain this summer. Are you expecting some sort of vaccine passport scheme? If you are, have you got any idea as to what the requirements of that might ultimately be? Second question, just going back into the reopening of the 2017-2021 DORA to reflect the losses resulting from COVID. In your view, obviously very early stages, but how would that sort of compensation most likely work? Would it likely be through higher tariffs at some stage, perhaps in DORA 3, or is there some other way that it might happen?
I guess the third question from me, where would your balance sheet need to be, in terms of net debt, EBITDA, or indeed some other measure that you might prefer, in order for you to think about starting paying dividends again? Thank you.
With regard to your first question, I will share with you what I know today. First of all, the Spanish government approach is to be as helpful as possible and to be as, let's say, proactive as possible in developing any sort of European-wide solution. Indeed, part of that is the passport or the certificate, the Digital Green Certificate. I know the Spanish health department is working on that. They are working on the app, they are working on the digital development, on everything. They are coordinating with other European countries. Ultimately, for that to be effective, for Spain to be able to implement it effectively and in a way that really benefits the country, it is important to make sure that the rest of the European countries, or the main countries that are our markets, are doing the same.
This is what is creating some difficulty in terms of assessing when that will be available. For instance, let's think in terms of the U.K. Let's assume that the U.K. agrees to that earlier rather than later. That will make a huge difference to us. Germany, indeed. These kind of things. I think my expectation is at some point in time over the summer, that will be effective, and that will be extremely helpful. I wish that would happen early in the summer, June. Frankly, today, I wouldn't be very confident on that because different countries are following different rules. There are other decisions that may help, even if there is no Digital Green Certificate in place yet. For instance, decisions made by the U.K. when the U.K. lift the restrictions on the 17th of May.
Our understanding is that they will be implementing a sort of traffic light code. Depending on where Spain sits in that traffic light code, that will be more or less helpful. Potentially, if there are some regions that are meant to be green, that will be extremely helpful as well. There are a number of initiatives that I think some of them will come to fruition over the summer, but I would like to see them working early in the summer rather than later in the summer. I cannot tell you whether that will happen or not, honestly speaking. With regard to the way we expect this gap, the deficit to be recovered is exactly right what you said, would be through slight increases in charges beyond 2026.
We are not concerned, as I said before, about how long that will take, because for us, well, as long as there is a cost of capital consideration taken into account, it wouldn't be any problem for us to wait a number of DORAs to get compensated. In terms of the net debt to EBITDA, frankly, this is something I said a number of times in the past, pre-COVID. We don't have any target net debt to EBITDA ratio. We are happy to. Well, maybe I misunderstood your question, probably. I'm thinking now. Dividends are driven by profits rather than net debt to EBITDA. This is the policy in place. Of course, this policy should be revisited in the coming year, but I see no reason to change that.
There will be a payout, and that payout will apply to the profit, and that's the policy. No reason to, unless obviously things are extremely wrong and the business is in financial trouble, which is not the case, frankly. I'm very confident that Aena is strong and will remain strong through the crisis in terms of the financial standing. Otherwise, it's just profits.
Just pushing back on that profit point. Clearly you're recognizing revenue from the minimum annual guarantees at the moment. Would that likely be excluded from any profit calculations that you might perform in terms of thinking about dividend payment?
No, I can tell you profit is going to be accounting IFRS-based profit, and there is only one. I have to say, the profit that we always used as reference is the Aena SME, so the parent company one. Still, the accounting profits are just one, and they are IFRS based, and they will apply.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Marcin Wojtal calling from Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yes, thank you very much. I wanted to ask a question on a different topic. In March, you announced you are going to make EUR 550 million investment in your Climate Action Plan over the next 10 years. Can you give some examples of what these investments will cover, and is any of that in the regulated segment, and is any of that included in your DORA submission? Maybe a second question, if I may. In your DORA submission, you are including your WACC at 7.68%, I believe. Can you explain why you are asking for an increase in the WACC despite lower interest rates? Is it a higher risk profile of the asset to higher asset beta or higher equity risk premium due to COVID? Thank you.
Hi, Marcin. This is Emilio. Regarding the Climate Action Plan, you are completely right. We have announced around EUR 550 million to be invested between this year and 2030. It's a slightly longer period than the pure DORA II, but a part of it would be included in DORA II being the most relevant project before photovoltaic plants that are going to be built in different airports in our network. Being, I think the investment of these photovoltaic plants, EUR 350 million. Sincerely, I don't have now on top of my head the amount that is going to be a regulated investment. We can José, you know it.
Yeah. Well, I think that roughly more than 60% of that will be regulated and the rest will be unregulated. Everything that is going to be invested over the coming five years is indeed in the DORA II submission.
Yeah, another investment will also be driven in also to make more efficient the electricity consumption in different terminals using LEDs. Also, in terms of the air conditioning of terminals, also using clean energy and also the use of electric cars within our airports by us and also by the handling operators. All in all, in order to reduce the climate impact of our network, but also trying to influence also the airline industry in terms of trying to use in the future hydrogen or other kind of sustainable fuels on this industry. Also remind you that on our Annual General Meeting that was held two days ago, the Climate Action Plan was approved, and you have a copy of this action plan on our website that you can download and read it in detail. Thank you.
I will answer your question on the WACC. First of all, we submit a WACC proposal that it is what we believe is our cost of capital, regardless whether this is higher or lower or equivalent to the previous one. It's true that the rates went down, it's true as well that following the CNMC methodology that they have already applied to a number of other industries in Spain, we took the view that the current risk-free rates in Spain are somehow affected by the quantitative easing policies, it's only right to incorporate an element of correction or adjustment. That was already taken into account, as I said before, by the CNMC in a number of other regulatory instances. In our case, we added that to the risk-free rate, to the Spanish bond yield, to come to the risk-free rate.
With regard to the cost of equity, no doubt at all that the betas went up. Statistically, this is absolutely clear, crystal clear. If you take into account that the weight of the cost of equity in our WACC calculation is disproportionately is not the right word, is higher than the relative weight of debt, all that together led us to a cost of capital that is higher than the one we have today. We are happy to share with you if you needed the details, frankly, no issues at all. Those are the two key headlines, if you like.
Okay, well, thank you so much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Dario Maglione, calling from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, José. Hi, Emilio. Three questions from me. On traffic for July and August, what is your assumption in terms of best case and worst case? Second question, again, on traffic. If you look at the U.S., the leisure traffic is really picking up quite quickly. When do you think leisure traffic in Spain will recover to 2019 level? Why not as soon as next year? Final question on the regulation DORA II. Aena put forward the proposed IMAP for the DORA II. How do you expect the IMAAJ to be in 2022 and 2023, taking account all the adjustments like the K-factor and COVID, and so on? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Dario. Well, regarding the traffic July and August, since it's very difficult to give you any forecast, sincerely, I think that talking in line to what José has mentioned a few minutes ago, first of all, we have to see how the different restrictions from the different countries are being lifted. Whether or not initially Spain or certain regions of Spain are included in these different traffic lights. That would also be very important to what is going to be the traffic recovery. Nevertheless, we also have the domestic part that as long as the state of alarm ends by the 9th of May, the restrictions to travel within the different regions would be lifted. This kind of traffic will not have any limit, hopefully in the next months.
We might see a certain recovery coming from the domestic traffic, hopefully similar to what we saw in July last year once also the state of alarm period and the restriction were lifted here in Spain. In the case of the example you have made of the U.S. and leisure pickup, undoubtedly, Aena network is going to be benefited from our high percentage of leisure traffic in comparison with other airports, and that's also the reason why I was pointing now this U.K., German, and domestic leisure traffic. Also, I think it's too soon to know whether this leisure traffic is going to be recovered back to 2019 figures and next year, or it is going to take a longer term.
As you can imagine, the current situation also in terms of vaccination programs, I think it's going pretty well, and I think the prospects tend to be optimistic. Sincerely, we prefer to wait and see before trying to stick to a certain year for that recovery. Your final question was regarding, yes, the IMAP and IMAAJ of 2022, 2023. As we have mentioned earlier in this call, we have that the IMAAJ of years 2022 and 2023 is going to be affected by the K-factor compensation coming from year 2020 and 2021. This negative impact is partly going to be offset by the COVID expenses and also the security expenses that we have also included in our proposal of regulation.
We have, let's say, another card that could be raised and has to be analyzed by the regulators, as José has mentioned also earlier, on this deficit created by the tariff cap during DORA II. That's it. Sincerely, we have to wait until we have the final regulation in September to see how this could be offset and how the regulator regulates on this front. Thank you.
Okay. Very clear. Thanks Emilio.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of José Manuel Arroyas, calling from Santander. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you. My questions have been answered. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Nicolo Pessina, calling from Mediobanca. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you. Just a few quick follow-ups. The first one is, with traffic in 2021 still very well below the 2019 level, would you expect a high level of concentration as it was last year with a negative K-factor in 2023? Probably yes, hearing the answer you just gave a minute ago, but just wanted to have a confirmation of this. Second, with negative inflation in 2020 in Spain, should we expect a negative P-factor in 2022? Finally, we talked about Brazil before. The state of São Paulo recently launched an auction for 22 very small regional airports. I'm wondering if you are looking at this auction as an opportunity to grow in the country.
Yes. Regarding your first question, well, I think you have also answered yourself. Yes, we believe a certain amount of concentration is going to be generated in 2021. Nevertheless, we still have to see how the traffic evolves. This first quarter, it has been a concentration. As I've mentioned, we still have to see what happens in third and fourth quarter in order to have a clear view of what is going to be amount that could be affecting on 2023 tariffs. Regarding your question on Brazil, I don't know if I get it correctly. You were mentioning 22 airports tender?
No, the P-factor in 2022 should be negative given negative inflation in 2020?
Well, Nicolo, with regard to the inflation in Spain and the P index, as you know, they follow separate ways. It's difficult to assess the P-factor just by looking at the headline CPI. I would say impossible.
Okay
I wouldn't be able to tell you, so frankly. The final one, which round in particular you were thinking of in terms of the Brazilian?
Well, the state of São Paulo recently launched an auction for 22 regional airports within the state.
Okay.
Is it-
We are looking at every opportunity there, but this is probably a longer shot. This is not for this year, as you said.
Okay.
I'm not aware of anything immediate in Brazil, to be honest. For 2021, I'm not aware of anything. Maybe I'm missing something, but no, I don't think so.
Sure.
Okay.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you. There are no further questions on the phone line, if you'd like to continue.
Okay. Thank you very much to all of you for joining us on this quarterly presentation. As in other occasions, we'll be here on the first half results presentation next month of July. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye.